


A Hundred Visions And Revisions

by wreathed



Category: The Smoking Room
Genre: Blow Jobs, Daydreaming, Ficlet, M/M, Sexual Fantasy, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-06
Updated: 2010-07-06
Packaged: 2017-10-22 17:48:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What might have been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Hundred Visions And Revisions

If he’d been just that bit braver, Robin thinks, restless and uninterested in the idle chatter presently filling the yellowing room, how would it have gone? If he’d seen what had been right in front of him (that everyone, bloody _everyone_ knew), or if Ben from the post room has seen what had been right in front of him (Robin’s unwavering, maddening devotion), how would it have gone?

 _I’m a waste of space_ is, of course, the first thing Robin tells himself, and so his first reaction is that it’s better this way: his friend is out, happy and attached, and Robin has saved face and probably retained a salvageable friendship. Because Ben from the post room would have definitely said no.

“I don’t think we’d work,” he’d have said (as unintentionally charming and devastating as ever). “I’ll help you find someone, though,” and Robin would grimace through the rest of their years for a quiet life and a fear of losing all of him, even if someone else – his boyfriend, maybe even husband one day – gets him the most.

Or perhaps, _perhaps_. Just possibly. They’d at least have a go before it all went wrong. There would have been a single attempt: for a short while, Ben from the post room would have felt as on fire with longing as Robin has for all this time; after their end, they’d never look at each other in the eye. But it’s better to have loved and lost, after all.

The third outcome is only possible in the guise it’s always existed in: his idle daydreams and his predictable night-time ones. It always goes the same way.

“ _Yes_ ,” Ben from the post room answers him simply, meeting Robin’s eyes with his wide, oh-so-dark ones, peering up at Robin from underneath his endearingly floppy fringe, smiling broadly enough to light up his whole face. And then they’d kiss, messily and gloriously, the awkward preamble impossibly skipped over through the magic of imagination.

“Sorry,” Robin mumbles against Ben from the post room’s ear as his fingers fumble towards his waistline, barely sorry at all, mind both nervous and joyous. “Hopeless with other fella’s belts.”

His warm laugh is enough for Robin – still blushing and embarrassingly enamoured even in his mind’s eye, because that’s simply how it must be, even in the best possible world – to reach forward and make him moan. To drop so readily to his knees, happy having waited so long to wait just a little longer and give him this well-deserved reward–

“Robin?” Lillian’s voice calls softly, and Robin snaps back to reality. He’s in his favourite chair in the smoking room, and Ben from the post room is laughing at Duncan’s jokes three flights up and is barely acknowledging him. Nothing has changed.

Shoulders hunched and frowning, Robin lights a fag and crosses his legs.


End file.
